Sight and Sound 2022: The Final Showdown

it is showing these awful men in a very alluring light

The fight between Lorraine Bracco and Ray Liotta when he was in prison, with their toddlers crying while witnessing it, that was awful. Just extreme uncaring adult vanity. And the other characters are so much worse

Correct -- the film indicts them all. It doesn't glorify them."

it is showing these awful men in a very alluring light

No, it's not! One of my favorite cutaways in the last third is to Paulie grilling a sausage. That's what his life has become: a mob boss in his bathrobe whose most trusted boy he knows will sell him out, and the only thing he can control is that goddamn sausage.

You're really getting this wrong imo.

I guess maybe you're right.

I just can't separate myself from Ray Liotta's voice-over, and as the narrator it seems like the film is wanting you to empathize with him

That's the ambiguity of the film.

I'm not voting for it ftr

Perhaps confused with The 4th Man?

― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, September 10, 2023 6:50 PM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

if the 4th man (which i would call a top five verhoeven picture) were on this list it’d be a way more interesting and perverted and bisexual list (crash will once again do in a pinch)

yes the absence of queerness here is, I guess, no surprise

i mean the third man is gay too, tbf

fwiw while I agree with everything Alfred and darra say I also think Goodfellas *does* portray the mobster life as attractive at times, especially early on - you know, the "Rags To Riches" drop and all that. But that is necessary, otherwise it'd just be "horrible ppl do horrible things for no discernible reason", which tbf is the plot of many films but not the kind of thing an old Catholic like Scorsese is interested in. Evil must be alluring, but it must also lead to ruin.

I have no moral issue with any of this, kinda have one with Henry Hill and the fed's commentary track tho (if we're viewing that as part of the Work).

xposts

ofc annie hall is here embodying eternities of straight repression

xp

I also think Goodfellas *does* portray the mobster life as attractive at times, especially early on - you know, the "Rags To Riches" drop and all that. But that is necessary, otherwise it'd just be "horrible ppl do horrible things for no discernible reason", which tbf is the plot of many films but not the kind of thing an old Catholic like Scorsese is interested in. Evil must be alluring, but it must also lead to ruin.

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, September 10, 2023

but that ruin, with Scorsese's magic, is also portrayed as alluring and attractive, which is my problem with it

Crash was really good, and that last scene by the side of the road after the accident was all-time great

it is the closest a movie has gotten to a poem for me

and yet it is so perverted and disgusting. god

but that ruin, with Scorsese's magic, is also portrayed as alluring and attractive, which is my problem with it

It's dialectical!

but that ruin, with Scorsese's magic, is also portrayed as alluring and attractive, which is my problem with it

Is it? As Alfred says, he ends as some shmuck in witness protection, trapped in the suburban hell he spe t his life trying to escape. It's hardly a Cagney/Scarface glorious death in battle ending.

scorsese is seduced by violence and violent men, he lingers and stylizes and all that, but hes not a mindless moth to the flame of the character imo

I suppose one could say The Age of Innocence fetishizes thwarted longing, but that's not what happens.

Is it? As Alfred says, he ends as some shmuck in witness protection, trapped in the suburban hell he spe t his life trying to escape. It's hardly a Cagney/Scarface glorious death in battle ending.

If Goodfellas taught me anything, it's that a man in a bathrobe is a defeated man.

it's probably arguably true that Casino does a better job of making an even grander and more moneyed world look even more unappealing and hellish, but i think Goodfellas is excellent at showing how shortsighted and stupid these dudes are, living night by night and never thinking more than a couple of steps ahead, to the point that they're incapable of sighting the death coming for them, unless they're fortunate enough to be the last one alive and they finally figure it out. Henry Hill was a dead man walking the instant Jimmy boxed him out of the inner circle w/r/t Morrie, for example. He's living on borrowed time and doesn't know it. i think this film is def in the vein of The Public Enemy or other films, really violent and frequently funny movies which are also more obviously moralistic (and Goodfellas is, just not obviously so.)

as soon as everyone starts wearing bathrobes in Goodfellas, it's over!

Jimmy trying to fit the silencers on the guns: bathrobe city over there

would argue those 30's movies aren't moralistic at all! or well, they have moralistic endings appended to them to placate moralists but with your usual WB joint there's never any doubt that James Cagney or Edward G Robinson are really cool, morally righteous dudes getting theirs

I never hear anyone complain about this but then those movies also don't show up on lists much

I agree

Goodfellas. Basic problem here is, all the imagery that mirrors the viewer's wish-fulfillment fantasies of glamor, wealth and power are far stronger and more memorable than the eventual images of their loss. The unintended takeaway is that most of the audience has never had any glamor, wealth or power at any point in their lives, so those high-flying gangster lives are still powerful images for the audience's envy.

hmm idk, The Public Enemy has the character of Tom's brother Mike, scolding him for a life of crime throughout. I'd say this is NOT a detriment to the story though, those scenes are pretty great. in Goodfellas it's more about who we see on the sidelines and in the background, watching. Scorsese does this in The Irishman too, with Anna Paquin, more obviously but really effectively i think.

Aimless, you said it exactly

Just as grim are the sequences where schmuck fry sausages and collect the morning paper in bathrobes.

What Aimless describes is truer about Warner Bros gangter flicks.

i think what Scorsese does do that the WB films don't is make the downfall not precipitous but gradual, they still think they're living the high life but all around them are the signs that will lead to their doom, but they're too self-absorbed to notice them. Too dumb to make the types of decisions that would right the ship. and thank god for the story imo, they're completely lacking in self-reflection.

Let's change the subject. Can we discuss Goodbye, Dragon Inn or Pickpocket?

Goodbye Dragon Inn is such a mesmerizing film.

I'm sort of afraid to rewatch Goodbye, Dragon Inn because I loved it so much the first time I saw it and I've kind of mythologized it in my mind. But I expect it will hold up to repeat viewing. There's a ghostliness about it.

Goodfellas is supposedly one of the more simplistic movies here yet people continue to not get what the director is doing.

Crash was really good, and that last scene by the side of the road after the accident was all-time great

No matter how alluring Cronenberg makes it look, I implore no-one to seek erotic vehicular death heading southbound on Bayview Ave.

but that ruin, with Scorsese's magic, is also portrayed as alluring and attractive, which is my problem with it

I see this, a little; somebody may be hanging on a meathook, but Derek and the Dominoes make it seem a little grand.

Casino does a better job of making an even grander and more moneyed world look even more unappealing and hellish

I prefer Casino to Goodfellas because it lowers the temperature.

Can we discuss Goodbye, Dragon Inn

One reason I haven't seen this is because I was eagerly following Tsai's films in the 90s, where he seemed to be raising the stakes with each film, until he ended up at the end of the world with The Hole. Then came What Time Is It There? which struck me as so trivial in comparison, I lost interest for a long time.

Goodfellas sucks and is maybe the worst movie ever made

Happy treat some see nuance in it but I think it’s the apotheosis of what makes men awful, and not in a constructive way

Goodfellas is told from Henry's, and occasionally Karen's, perspective, and it wouldn't make sense if a life of crime wasn't portrayed as alluring and something they want to be part of. For a dumb kid with no money or imagination whose dad beats his ass, he's naturally going to want what he sees from his window, which is a bunch of guys who nobody fucks with doing what they want. That's all any of the crew want: what's immediate and flashy and tacky. Their problem is their worldview never expands, and they all run up against the limits of what a life of smash-and-grab can bring you. This is a very common theme in crime movies but it's a testament to Scorsese's genius that it's only with his movies where people do this annoying hand-wringing like they're going to get in trouble for watching them.

The other side to that is that these men are a tiny subset of society who embody the whole suite of toxic masculine traits, and are vastly over-represented in movies. Showing them from early on in their careers does give us an overview of how these traits start out - the aggression, combative banter, one-upmanship, sexism, etc. - and how they develop over time, but that starting point isn't an everyman thing, maybe it's mainstream male culture, but I just don't identify with that at all, I don’t find any of them charming or even interesting, except Joe Pesci maybe in that he's an out-and-out villain who gets his comeuppance. For the rest of them, it's just that I'm spending a couple of hours with people I wouldn't want to spend any time with in real life, and their downfalls just don't hold any emotional weight for me.

most things that appear frequently in movies are vastly overrepresented in movies

And that's bad

its fine

it's no crime, it's just boring

The argument that they’re not relatable sounds like a studio boss giving notes to me. The most interesting movies are very often ones that document some particular subculture or niche aspect of life in depth. As to why that has to be criminals so often, well, this same director has made impassioned movies about Tibetan monks and Jesuit priests and look how those fared with the public. Gangsters are over-represented for the same reason cowboys and vampires have been: it’s a popular genre. It matters how the filmmaker contextualizes and/or subverts the material with their own personal expression.

And besides, there’s a reason Goodfellas is one of the most quoted movies of the last half-century or so: it IS funny as hell while also being clear-eyed about who we’re watching. The movie’s most famous scene is about this dichotomy.

I hate to use the word "relatable" but when I find every character in a film to be an irredeemable asshole then I just find it harder to appreciate.

These movies are not for everyone but irredeemable people can still be entertaining and even capable of insight. This is just an uncomfortable truth and can be the subject of great art.

Cowboys represent the exploration of a new space, the building of a new society, I can get that, as problematic as it obviously is. Vampires are all about sex, youth and conquering death, I can get that too. But what are gangsters about?

Should say here, I don't hate Goodfellas, the "funny like a clown" scene is a highlight, sure, but great art?

I would say cowboys and vampires can also be about more than that and gangsters are no different. Crime movies and shows quite famously mirror power structures in more so-called legitimate industries or aspects of society. The best ones are honest about vice and the temptation of taking a shortcut to get ahead when it feels like you have few options. And Italian-Americans are not the only cinematic subjects of this treatment.

I would say to deny Goodfellas is art is pure elitism and, in a few people, resentment that some Catholic who’s not an intellectual per se could come up with something so good. It’s been so widely imitated (with diminishing results) because it’s such a deliriously effective work by craftspeople who know cinema inside and out.

It is pretty funny that the anti-Goodfellas feeling here has lead to it being the only movie anyone talks about for the second time in a row.

How do we feel about Double Indemnity? Prettt irredeemable protagonists iirc.

Harry Lime also pretty charming.

couldn't accuse holly of it tho

in order to ensure the moral safety of the audience double indemnity carefully inoculates its protagonist against seeming glamorous or attractive by casting fred macmurray

it's no crime, it's just boring

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 11 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Leave crime to toxic bros